La relación entre el gasto en defensa y el crecimiento económicoestudio de los casos de España y los países de la OTAN

Abstract

The relationship between defense spending and its influence on the economy has occupied and continues to occupy the thinking of the corresponding authorities and academia. The study of the literature, through a scientometric analysis, reveals the absence of a single answer to try to explain the relationship between the variables considered, causing that since Benoit in 1973 to the present day, the way in which these variables are related continues to be analyzed. Faced with this dilemma, it is worth asking whether, taking the Keynesian perspective as a reference, there is a relationship between defense spending and economic growth in Spain being analyzed from three dimensions. The first focuses on the causal relationship, in the Granger sense, between military expenditure and economic growth in Spain between 1960 and 2018. The second by analyzing the existence of other variables that, together with defense spending, could influence GDP growth. And the third one, analyzing Spain from an international perspective by observing defense spending and GDP for NATO countries, in the period between 2005 and 2018, through a Panel Data model. The results obtained allow us to affirm, based on the Keynesian perspective, that in Spain there is a positive bidirectional relationship between defense spending and economic growth. Moreover, this positive effect is maintained when defense spending is analyzed in conjunction with other expenditure variables such as education spending, expenditure on gross fixed capital formation and trade spending. And finally, with regard to the results obtained in NATO countries, it is possible to identify five models within the Alliance, with the positive effect of defense spending being higher in the so-called "nuclear" countries, namely the United Kingdom, the United States and France, as opposed to the Eastern countries.